


Spent All My Years (In Believing You)

by EmAndFandems



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: 6000 Years of Slow Burn (Good Omens), Angst with a Happy Ending, Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Everyone Has Issues, M/M, Post-Canon, fanfic more like character therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-03-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:26:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23263930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmAndFandems/pseuds/EmAndFandems
Summary: “Oh, ’41,” Aziraphale says without thinking, fingers stilling in Crowley’s hair.“Mm.” Crowley smiles. “Rome?”In which certain truths are uncovered and discussed.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 32
Kudos: 199





	Spent All My Years (In Believing You)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Queen's "Somebody to Love," of course.

They’re sitting, snuggling really, on the sofa. Familiar and comfortable. The sun’s just slid beneath the horizon; the quiet of a summer evening is settling in. There is neither a fire nor a fireplace, but the warmth of one permeates the room anyway.

“When did you know?” The words slip out of Crowley suddenly. He wasn’t expecting it. They’ve only escaped because he was so caught up in the cosiness of the moment, the security of it.

“Oh, ’41,” Aziraphale says without thinking, fingers stilling in Crowley’s hair.

“Mm.” Crowley smiles. “Rome?”

Aziraphale frowns and shifts in his seat. “What? Ah. No, the church. Berlin.  _ Nineteen _ forty-one. _ _ Sorry, perhaps I ought to have specified; it’s just the human custom, you understand, I’m sure—”

Crowley has stiffened beside him. He sits up. “Nineteen…?”

“I— yes. I mean…”

“So five and a half thousand years in.  _ That’s _ when you knew, that’s what you’re telling me?”

Aziraphale passes a hand over his eyes. “I’m sorry— I’m sorry it took me so long, Crowley. You— I knew you loved me long before then.”

“S’that supposed to make me feel  _ better?” _ Crowley demands. He hunches into himself.  _ “Fuck, _ angel. Nearly six thousand really. All that time and you— I was just— I knew you needed me to wait but I thought, I really thought… I figured  _ maybe, _ but. Forty-one.  _ Shit. _ The blessed  _ church, _ oh, I might have known it would’ve been the bloody books…”

He’s really working himself into a rant now. Aziraphale tries again to intervene. “Really, I’m terribly sorry.” He lays a hand on an anger-tense shoulder and flinches as it is shrugged off. “Crowley. Please.”

Crowley sniffs. He swipes furiously at his face and Aziraphale tactfully looks away for a few seconds so as to pretend not to have noticed the tears. “Yeah. It’s fine. I’m fine. Whaddya want?”

“I want you to know what I meant,” Aziraphale says. With nowhere else to go, his hands are tangled in his lap. He twists his ring just for something to do with his fingers, because he can’t bear reaching out again, not if he’ll be pushed away. His chest aches. His voice is wobbly. “Will you listen?”

“Course I will. Always have, me.” Crowley’s words are tight and small and they  _ hurt,  _ cutting right to the core of the pain between them, all their history, everything wrong with their past.

“You have. I know. Yes.” Aziraphale swallows. He takes a deep breath. “My dear, I— I knew you loved me very early on, and it  _ terrified _ me. You weren’t supposed to, to even be capable of it. I didn’t… know what it could mean. For a demon to… and for  _ me,  _ to…

“I loved you far earlier than I knew it, I think. I do. I can’t quite tell when exactly it began, but I know now that it was a good while before I realized it formally, as it were. You must understand, Crowley, I simply  _ couldn’t— _ well, anything, really. I couldn’t bring myself to face what this could be. What I wasn’t allowed to want it to be. And I  _ did _ want it, for a very long time. But you asked when I  _ knew, _ and that was the moment you passed me my briefcase.”

“Was a nice moment,” Crowley tells his own knees. “Really carried it off well, if I do say so myself, which I do. Nice touch there with the books.”

“Yes,” says Aziraphale gratefully, “that was exactly it, you see; you hadn’t just saved me from being annoyingly shot— which would have been much appreciated on its own, by the way. It wasn’t enough, for you, to rescue me like Paris all those years earlier. You had this grand plan, didn’t you? A lovely dramatic entrance and all. You… you chose to forgive me for turning down the one thing you ever really asked of me, and you helped me anyway, and  _ then _ you were thoughtful enough to remember the books. It was the books that did it, but only because it was so clearly a mark of who you were, Crowley. Who you are. Saving my books because you knew I would miss them if they were gone— that’s precisely the lovely sort of instinctive goodness you’ve been squashing down for millennia, darling, and to see it directed at  _ me…  _ Well, I was a bit of a goner; I couldn’t hide from that anymore. So it was then, yes, that I knew I loved you.  _ Love _ you. I love you, Crowley, and I’m sorry it took me so long to see it, and to say it, and to let you hear it as much as you deserve to hear it. I love you. A thousand times over, a million times. So much more than I can say.”

“Love you too,” a mumble, almost an apology. Then Crowley bursts out with, “S’just—”

Aziraphale waits. Crowley waves his hands about for a minute or two as he searches for the words he needs. He’s flushed and wire-taut, stretched thin under the strain of holding back from lashing out. Eventually, fingers forming and re-forming fists in his lap, he says in a voice so quiet it is almost not there at all, “It was so long, Aziraphale.”

“I know,” says Aziraphale immediately. Tears prickle behind his eyes and he blinks hard to force them away, because he has no right to cry when he’s the one who’s made Crowley upset, and he shouldn’t feel hurt by any of this, because Crowley’s the one who waited for him. It is his turn. Crowley needs soothing and Crowley needs attention, and Aziraphale is very good at giving him both of those things, and he  _ ought _ to. He is the angel. He should play the healing role, the nurturer, the protector. He is a guardian. He is the strong one. Crowley is hurting, and it’s his fault, so he’s  _ especially _ got to be the one to fix this mess of them. “You have every right to be upset with me.”

Crowley looks up quickly. His eyes are wide—- Aziraphale might almost call them frantic. “I’m not. Angel, I swear, I'm not. I’m not upset with  _ you.” _

“You’re not?” Aziraphale allows himself to loosen his shoulders just the tiniest bit. “But…”

Crowley pulls himself closer to Aziraphale again. He’s not draped across his lap, or leaning on his shoulder, or any of their typical evening-sofa positions; this is better, though, because he’s at just the right distance for Aziraphale to catch the nuances of emotion that flicker through gold. Crowley sets a hand on Aziraphale’s knee. Aziraphale tries to keep from trembling.

“Aziraphale. Listen, I’m  _ not _ angry with you for needing time. I’m… I’m fucking furious at those wankers Upstairs for convincing you— for telling you all the  _ bullshit _ that held you back so long. I swear, I could kill an archangel right now, but I— I wouldn’t— not ever, I’d  _ never  _ blame you for any of this. Angel, the mess we were in, the shitstorm of a trainwreck of our past, that’s not on you, and I shouldn’t’ve let you think it was.”

Aziraphale focuses on the mixed metaphor so he won’t fall apart. If he tries to comprehend it, he won’t cry. If he doesn’t think about it—

“Okay?” Crowley’s hand is a firm pressure, an anchor to the present moment, holding Aziraphale here and holding him together. His eyes are gentle and careful and afraid all together. What a complicated picture the two of them make: leaning in for reassurance even as they push one another away. Aziraphale is tired of dancing when he doesn’t know the steps.

“Yes.” Yes, Aziraphale understands Crowley’s unrighteous anger; he has felt it in the secret parts of himself. He is done with hiding— or at least, he wants to be. “I really am sorry.”

“Oh, don’t,” says Crowley. He shakes his head to dislodge the sentence. “No, you’re not going to apologize for this anymore, I won’t listen to it.”

Aziraphale starts to smile. “But all those years—”

“Forget them.” Crowley grabs Aziraphale’s hands in his own. “No, angel, really, forget it. It doesn’t matter. I knew all along that you couldn’t say it yet, just didn’t realize you couldn’t even  _ think _ it. But what difference does any of that make now?  _ Look at us! _ Look!”

Aziraphale doesn’t have to look. He knows them by heart. He sees.

“All the time in the world,” he murmurs, and Crowley grins.

“Yeah.”

“Do you have suggestions for how to fill some of that time?” Aziraphale asks primly. Crowley snickers and opens his mouth. Aziraphale holds up a hand to pause him. “Because I do.”

“Oh? Do tell.” Crowley’s leaning back in his seat now, settling back against Aziraphale like they were made to be fitted into one another. His weight is so familiar; his presence, so known. They have all the time they could ever want. Aziraphale intends to spend it exploring this territory they have carved out. The shape they make together is open, and inviting, and waiting.

“Well,” says Aziraphale, “I rather thought we might begin by having a wonderful evening at home together.”

It’s a beautiful phrase, Aziraphale thinks, as Crowley releases a true smile and his heart glows with the peace of it.  _ At home together. _

And they are.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please drop a comment to let me know what you thought <3


End file.
